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simonxlong — 10 years ago(March 26, 2016 12:44 PM)
In the movie, Garvin didn't necessarily want Sanders gone so much as he wanted Meredith to stay. Originally, she saved the merger by proposing the spin off in order to lesson the price enough for Connolly to buy. I don't think Garvin was in on setting Sanders up from the beginning, and it was Meredith using the sexual harassment charges to push Sanders out in order to cover up her incompetence.
Later, I think Garvin got on board because he saw Sander's threatening the merger as a sort of betrayal. Remember, if the merger and spin off happened, Sanders would be wealthy, so why the heck rock the boat was Garvin's way of looking at it. Not to mention, Sander's potential lawsuit threatened Garvin's massive pay off too. I think later it was pure revenge on Garvin's part.
In the book, Garvin has lost his daughter and sees Meredith as a replacement child so to speak. Consequently, he actually believes she is the victim even at the end because of his obviously skewed perspective. Personally, I never liked the book's reasons, and I like the much more greedy and mercenary Garvin from the movie.
I agree that Garvin's reasons could have been made more clear. -
simonxlong — 9 years ago(April 07, 2016 01:55 AM)
The way I read the video between Meredith and Arthur is them trying to figure out how to cover up their mistakes. What I think it is trying to imply is that Sanders set up the line and then Meredith came in behind him and made changes to it in order to cut costs and make herself look good for reducing expenses. She didn't change the line to set up Sanders, she changed the line to reduce costs, but since she didn't know what she was doing from an engineering standpoint, she actually messed up badly. Now she needed a fall guy and decided to set up Sanders at that point. Arthur had gone along with her changes behind Sander's back, and he knew his rear was on the line too, so he went along with setting up Sanders.
I think at first Garvin did not know about the changes to the line, and he was simply promoting Meredith because she had helped land the merger and promoting a woman made him look good. All the stuff at the start of the film, where he is jerking Snaders around is because he passed him over for promotion and he needs to make sure Sanders doesn't do anything to upset the merger. Meredith, on the otherhand, still needed to cover her mistakes before anyone found out.
Where is goes off the rail for me is when she is outed due to the phone recording of the sexual harassment. At this point, Garvin has no real reason for backing Meredith over Sanders, at least not in the movie. In the book, it was because he saw Meredith as a stand in for his dead daughter. He really believed she was innocent and that she was getting a bum rap. It implies that Garvin was no longer completely rational after the loss of his daughter, at least where Meredith was concerned. Obviously, in the film Garvin is just a ruthless business man.
The only thing I have ever been able to figure is that Garvin sees Sanders threatening the merger as an act of betrayal. Even so, why not just push Meredith out at that point and then get rid of Sanders for something else later? For me, I think Garvin's actions are the only part of the movie that doesn't make sense and they represent a massive plot hole.
As for Phil, he is simply Garvin's hatchet man. At first, he is just supposed to make sure that Sanders stays in line after getting passed over. Later, of course, he is carrying out Garvin's orders to set up Sanders with the incompetence issue. His only motivation is to do what Garvin wants, at least in the movie.